Private Investigations

Sixteen

‘Are you glad to be retiring, Prof?’

The little pathologist peered up at Sammy Pye, through round-framed spectacles. His eyes were the only visible part of his body, the rest being encased in a surgical gown, cap and mask.

‘Would it shock you if I said that I’m not?’ Joe Hutchinson replied.

‘Probably not,’ the DCI admitted.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ the professor continued. ‘I know my time is up; I’m seventy years old as of last week. At the end of next month my contract with the Crown Office expires and I assume emeritus status at the university. Sarah Grace, my successor, was chosen personally by me, so I’m happy with that. My wife and I have travel plans that will involve ticking off our entire, extensive bucket list, beginning with a long, leisurely drive down to Monaco, for the Grand Prix.’

He peeled off his face mask and stepped away from the examination table, and the subject that lay on it. ‘Restore the child’s dignity please, Roshan,’ he said to his assistant as he approached Pye, who had been standing as far away from the action as the examination room allowed.

‘I’m looking forward to all of that, and to being a full-time husband, more or less. And yet,’ he murmured, ‘I’ll feel strange, to put it mildly. It’ll be like cutting myself off from a family, of sorts. I’ve never been a dispassionate pathologist, Sammy. I’ve always bonded with my subjects, and done my best to fulfil my duty towards them. Every deceased person who has come before me for examination has been a victim of something or other, be it disease, misfortune or violence, some premeditated, some not, and it’s been my task to speak on their behalf, to their families, to the courts and sometimes just to God.’

‘You believe in Him?’ the detective asked, surprised.

‘Absolutely,’ Hutchinson declared. ‘I believe in the existence of the incorporeal human spirit, and for me that’s the same thing. I’m not talking about the old fella with the white beard, though,’ he cautioned. ‘I believe that the spirit is a collective of which we become part when we die.’

‘Have you ever seen it?’

The little man laughed. ‘Seen the soul leave the body? Of course not, Sammy: if I claimed that I’d be eternally screwed as an expert witness, would I not? No, but I have felt it. Every time I perform an autopsy I feel that I am accompanied, and that I am the guardian of the trust of the former occupant of my subject. When I get it right, my unseen companion leaves me. But when I make a mistake, as I’ve done half a dozen times in my career, or when I’m unable to come to a definite conclusion, as has happened much more often, then I feel reproach, for some time afterwards, and let me tell you that is not comfortable.’

‘How do you feel now?’ Pye asked as the two stepped into the anteroom.

‘Satisfied,’ Hutchinson replied. ‘I won’t be followed home tonight, Chief Inspector. I can tell you categorically that poor little Olivia Gates, Zena as you called her, died from asphyxiation. She suffocated.’

‘She ran out of oxygen in the boot?’

‘No. That wasn’t airtight; I satisfied myself of that at the scene. The makeshift lining did its job too. She had no bumps, no bruises, no abrasions; she must have been placed carefully into her container.’

Pye nodded. ‘I’d worked that out. The intention was to abduct her, not to kill her.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘The child was asthmatic. I found dust from the foam rubber in her airways. Undoubtedly that triggered a severe attack from which she died.’

‘Alone in the dark,’ the DCI whispered.

‘Alone in the dark,’ the professor repeated. ‘I’d very much like to meet the chap who put her in there,’ he remarked, in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Preferably on the table in the next room.’

‘I wish I could arrange that,’ Pye said, ‘but the best we’ll be able to do is lock him up. When we do, I can’t guarantee that the custody staff won’t gob in his coffee, but that’s as far as we can go. Thanks, Prof. I’ll need to do some thinking about this.’

‘Surely it’ll be straightforward when you find him?’

‘Not necessarily. We know where the child was abducted, but we still have to place our suspect at the scene. We know that he was driving the car when Zena was found, but we need to prove to a jury that he put her in there.’

‘In that case, we have something that might help you. When Roshan undressed the child, he found inside her jacket a doll, a soft toy of Makka Pakka, a character from a TV series called In the Night Garden. I know this,’ he added, ‘because my granddaughter watched it when she was a toddler.’

‘So? It could have been her favourite. She might have taken it to school with her.’

‘My granddaughter had outgrown the Night Garden by the time she was three years old,’ the professor observed. ‘Maybe Olivia hadn’t, but my immediate assumption was that her abductor had given it to her in an attempt to keep her quiet. The doll is new, Sammy, brand new, so new that Makka Pakka has a price sticker on his bum, from Poundstretcher.’

Pye’s eyes gleamed as he peeled off his sterile paper cap. ‘And there’s one of those in North Berwick,’ he exclaimed. ‘Dino, we may have pinned you down.’